The Path of Ascension Chapter 399

Chapter 399

Matt shot to his feet even as his mind and [AI] raced.

He found dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of news companies reporting on the incident. Currently, everything was limited to Tier 35 and higher broadcasts, but that just meant they could speculate more than the lower-Tier media stations were allowed to do.

That meant they had some time until the information was ‘confirmed’ to get ahead of it.

“What appears to be Ascender Legion performing unethical and disturbing techniques on hapless prisoners found in a hidden bloodline research facility that was just raided moments ago. According to the leaked reports, dozens of low Tiers were captured and illegally used to test various plagues and curses.”

The man’s co-host nodded sagely. “If true, this would severely harm Ascender Legion’s reputation, which so far has been quite positive, and undo all her efforts to improve the reputation of blood magic.”

“This could be a government black site, Mitch.”

“A government black site that was capturing people off the street if the leaked identity reports are to be believed. These were low-Tier civilians, not criminals. If Ascender Legion took part in such actions, government involvement or not, it’s a blow to the blood magic community and a disturbing look at one of our newest Ascenders.”

Matt flipped a dozen more stations to see most of them were keeping everything speculative, but most was not all.

He watched as one reporter decried the methods she had used to reach Ascender power, and speculated if Liz had performed atrocities like this before which had been swept under the rug by the Path or other sources. Said “other sources” were left up to the viewer’s imagination, but it was clear they were implying Mara and Leon might have had a hand in the cover up.

It was so brazen, Matt was genuinely taken aback. How was any of that passing the various censorship and truthful reporting laws? Sure, as Dukes and Ascenders, there was a bit more wiggle room in the laws to ensure negative news about such individuals couldn’t be so easily covered up, but a few of the stations were being beyond brazen.

Thankfully, there were enough stations reporting that Matt was quickly able to get a fairly detailed picture.

Apparently, Liz had been in Kelispo at a secret blood mage research facility for plagues and curses. The recording had come to light when the facility had been raided and the recording leaked.

Matt immediately started looking at the provided information, but whoever set this up had picked a good time for the offence to occur. The recording was dated during a lull of the war when they had been delving via Allie’s teleportations and out of the public eye for months at a time, adding a layer of believability to the farce.

As he was watching, more information was leaked as someone on the raid team dumped the entire data log of the blood mage research facility.

The news stations, moving at Tier 35 if not higher speeds, took off with the information, giving reports while Matt still struggled to parse through the latest updates.

The hottest topic the news stations started to dig into were the fractured financials that had been recovered and where the research had been going.

The first was, from what Matt could tell, fairly well obfuscated. And the needs of his guild had led him to be well versed on money laundering techniques. Mostly, it came in the form of raw low-Tier mana stones or credits which had been moved through a dozen accounts. But the latter was more of a problem, as several data packets seemed to have gone to Liz’s bloodline facility in the Capital.

The fact that such information had been recovered at all, let alone so quickly, was incredibly suspicious, to the point that even some of the news stations pointed it out.

Matt wanted to say those stations weren’t being manipulated from behind the scenes, but they would have to see, as everyone was a suspect at this point.

Their hidden enemies were clearly wealthy and well-connected, which rarely meant stupid enough to burn their own assets in trying to force a narrative.

Still, even if completely faked, it looked bad for them. With the other evidence coming from the raided facility being seemingly legit, it made the accusations coming down on Liz look all the more damning.

Matt was searching for some kind of flaw they could use to prove his wife innocent when she barked a laugh and the flames and lightning that had been radiating off her vanished.

“Greedy fuckers overplayed their hand.”

Matt raised a questioning eyebrow and Liz flicked a finger at the screen, which then played back a spiritual recording of Liz performing the curses and plagues on the victim. Spiritual recordings weren’t perfect, but they could record the unique fluctuations that everyone’s spirit put out. They could be faked, but it was surprisingly hard to do so without specialized equipment, Talents, or time to forcefully change one’s spirit.

“Fuckers thought they were smart providing all the data instead of scrubbing everything but the visuals.”

Matt watched for a moment before noticing what Liz meant and chuckling himself, a majority of the stress leaving him.

There was only one spiritual resonance in the video, which for anyone but Liz would have been correct.

Ever since Tier 25, Liz had replaced her circulatory blood with another clone of her in her blood form to increase her power. Normally, it was impossible to tell because of all of her shielding and wards, but the video Liz hadn’t been using anything but the most basic, easily-seen-through ones. Which itself was somewhat suspect, but not nearly enough on its own, so the recording could tell there was only one of Liz in her body.

That was… surprisingly sloppy.

Sure, not many people knew of Liz’s trick with her clones, but Liz was right. The fact that the video had not been better scrubbed had just given them an opportunity to stop this farce in its tracks. Part of information warfare was removing excess information, and that went both ways. Less information might make accusations harder to stick, but too much information in a set up could end up helping the enemy.

Which was just what happened here.

By trying to add too much detail to their ploy, they had overstepped and served them a way to derail this entire thing.

Matt caught himself. It was enough to cast doubt, but some people would just assume Liz hadn’t bothered to double herself up outside combat and it was still her. But those types would never change their minds. It was the best answer they had, as well as the only one right now, so it would have to be good enough.

The next most important question was if they wanted to reveal the information.

Looking at Liz and seeing just how mad she still was despite having an out, Matt decided that yes. They probably wanted to.

“Want me to portal us into a news station? We can blow the top off this right here and now.”

Liz chewed on her lip for a minute. “If we let them keep talking, they might reveal more, and I really want to find out who tried to set me up.”

Matt chose his next words carefully. “Are you sure? Might be better to kick the bucket over and see what, or rather who, tries to clean up.”

Liz opened her mouth to answer but nodded. “That’s a fair point. You brought your spies, let’s ask them for their thoughts?”

Calling a meeting with the spies and their seneschals was basically pointless, as both groups had come running the moment the information hit the news stations. So had nearly everyone else, in fact, which Matt took as a good sign that their people trusted them enough to not believe the information without more definitive proof.

Isabella, despite being the lowest Tier and not the first through the door, was the first to speak. “I would recommend we quash this immediately. The longer this goes on, the harder it will be to remove this from the public perception of you, my lady. Reports are already citing blood mages as being a systemic problem if there is a cabal of blood mages working on plagues in secret.”

Matt felt Liz tighten up at that. He knew she was sensitive about blood mages’ reputations with how she had been looked at for having the power when she was younger. It was all tied up in her own more personal issues, but blood mages who didn’t go down the healer route were looked on with mistrust.

Liz signaled that she had heard her seneschal but asked the rest of the room. “I’ll take the hit in the short term if I have to, especially if it means we can figure out who is behind this. What gets us to this goal best? Waiting? Or seeing who starts covering this up if we prove it’s false?”

One of the spies that had come with them, Esmeralda, stepped forward. “Both could work, Ascender Legion. It’s more a question of how prepared the team who set this up was for rebuttals. If they were prepared, this might be a trap in some way, where they will reveal more information that counters your counter, and just makes you look more guilty. However, if this was a genuine mistake, seeing who starts scurrying when the light gets shined on them would give us our best results.”

Matt wanted to ask a question, but let Liz take the lead. He knew how angry she was, and letting her lead would help her feel in control, which was about as much as he could do at the moment.

“What is your estimation on this? It is sloppy or is it a trap?”

Esmeralda winced. “I was never an analytical type, Ascender Legion. I did field work. But my gut tells me this was sloppy. With the timing being just a week after Ascender Titan’s reveal, it feels like this was rushed, but the question is how. Based off the initial reports, the research facility seems like it was running for a while. Maybe these enemies started with the sole purpose to frame you, Ascender Legion. That’s the worst-case scenario, as it means everything will be centered around making you look guilty. On the other hand, our best-case scenario is that they just had a guy on the raid task force and planted the information when they saw the opportunity. It’s also possible they had a spy inside the facility and used them to plant the evidence which means it might be far more thorough than we see. They then could have tipped off the local Count to make everything that follows seem more legitimate. This game is all about double and triple guessing and hoping you are right.”

Jericho, the other intelligence agent, stepped in. “I did back-end work for a while before I decided I just didn’t like it after I was tagged, so I have a bit more experience with this kind of stuff. That said, if this is a pretense at being sloppy, it’s incredibly well done to the point I believe it was something quickly put together. Which I will note is entirely possible.”

Esmeralda agreed with him, leaving Matt stuck with the feeling of the unknown.

Isabella raised a finger and spoke when Liz nodded to her. “I just got confirmation that your research teams did have what seems to be legitimate correspondence with this hidden facility. Nine messages. The first one is when this team reached out to them shortly after our team was founded, looking to share what seemed to be mundane knowledge about bloodlines in general. As per your orders, the teams declined because of the secrecy clauses in the contracts. The teams were reached out to twice more, where a talk was held about clinical trials for this hidden team’s product, which is reportedly about boosting the power of blood-based potions. But when they couldn’t, or rather wouldn’t, properly identify themselves or reveal the actual product, and more importantly what went into it, the correspondence died out. I would like to note that none of that is truly rare, and the facility gets at least a dozen such offers a year. Most are legit from various alchemical groups, bloodline research groups, and even enchantment or rune-based groups. They are all just trying to keep their secrets close to their chest before they launch a product, but want outside minds to look things over. Others are just trying to sound out what a competitor is working on.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Liz finished Isabella’s statement herself. “And some are done by people with bad intentions like this.”

Cato took the momentary silence to ask. “While only a side profile was shown, I believe this constitutes impersonating an Ascender, which is a serious crime, as your likenesses are legally protected. Doubly so when impersonating an Ascender while committing a crime. The imperial government takes this very seriously. We could just sit back and wait for the government to dispel this farce.”

Liz shook her head. “Which they undoubtedly know and are prepared for. I’d put money that they are ready for that and at most, we’d find a disposable contractor who will take the fall but ultimately is a dead end. Let the government do their thing, but unless we specifically ask for this to escalate, they will just use regular investigators. And neither of us is interested in bringing a Royal or the Emperor into this. We aren’t children who need an adult to come clean up after us.”

That earned a wince all around, which was almost amusing enough to cause Matt’s mood to lighten.

The Emperor, like his father and grandmother before him, had taken a mostly hands-off approach to things beneath him, but when he was prompted to act, he usually did so with a hammer that splattered everyone involved. Not that Manny couldn’t act subtly, but when Matt had asked him about why he made such decisions, Manny had simply stated it kept people from coming to him for stupid things.

It was funny how much knowing the Emperor personally changed things. Everyone else in the room was probably worried Manny would be angry if he was drawn into such a small incident. When in reality the Emperor had already told them to just do whatever they wanted, damn the consequences.

That tidbit going public would give the various news agencies something real juicy to chew on. Just how much would they dare to speculate on that news? Probably a fair bit less than they were daring to do to his wife, Matt was sure of that.

Still he tried to calm himself down by reminding himself that the stations could be far worse.

Liz looked to him, silently asking for his opinion and bringing him back to the present. Matt made the choice that was best for his wife. Damn everything else, that was what mattered to him most.

“Let’s show our proof and see what happens. I agree this was a rush job. Maybe it was something they were preparing for a long time and pulled the trigger on early. That would mean this is a trap, but the timing of this suggests this fiasco was an opportunity they saw when the Count hit the facility and someone jumped on it, but that’s pure speculation. Either way, I think it’s best we cut this off as quickly as possible.”

Liz grimaced as he said speculation. “I’m really growing to hate that word. But you’re right. Let’s just go for it. I want to kick over that hornet’s nest right damn now. Everyone, go do what you need to do. In two minutes we will go to a news station. If you need to come, be there. If not, do whatever you need to do.”

The moment they were alone, she took his hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry they are trying to ruin your moment.”

Matt melted and pulled Liz’s hands up to kiss them. “That’s my line. I’m sorry they decided to attack you to try and get at me.”

Liz shook her head. “I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Between our suspicions that Aster’s problems are this cabal messing with her and now this, I think it’s pretty much confirmed they were always targeting all three of us. My instincts say this ploy was always being set up for me, they just fired it early to try and counter you too. Make it seem like your guild’s achievements were also accomplished using unethical methods or some crap like that.”

Matt didn’t like that thought, but he pushed it down as he remembered something he thought of earlier. “That reminds me. Eyria said the training aids for self-made skills deserve to be sold at an exorbitant price, similar to what Aster’s bad actors were saying. It could be obvious bait or coincidence, but distracted with my discovery, I hadn’t connected the dots right away.”

Liz growled. “I was already mad at these assholes, but now I’m furious. Hopefully this maneuver kicks up some response and we can drag whoever this is out into the light.”